


Within Reach

by stephanericher



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Established Relationship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 20:54:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7948789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And a billion kilometers away, Keith is smiling at him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Within Reach

First there is nothing; then there is a flood, a feeling of something he’s not aware enough to recognize until it hits him like a rockslide over the head when he tries to open his mouth, the water and the cold, the feeling that he’s drowning in the arctic and the screaming panic in his head as he lifts his arms from the water and feeling something sharp and cold but decisively less heavy and wet and that’s enough to pull his head out and gasp down some real air as he sputters before he nearly falls back in, bracing his hands on the edges of the container before pulling himself over the edge. Shiro collapses in a slippery wet heap, glancing around for something (anything) until he finds it, a blanket just a few centimeters away. He remembers to peel off his wet shirt before throwing it over his torso, then kicks off his pants before wrapping himself in the blanket completely. The chill is still in his bones, but it’s more bearable, bearable enough for him to think about something other than survival.

He knows where he is; even in blind panic he’d remembered that he’d gone under seven weeks ago, sleeping until the next routine checkup on the ship’s systems and regular communication with the base back in Phoenix. And also with Keith, because technically this should be once every two months but Keith’s birthday is nine days before the next scheduled checkup and it’s close enough that it was relatively easy to convince the base that checking nine days early wouldn’t be a terrible idea (and he’d barely needed to ask Matt and the captain; Matt had just smirked at him and Captain Holt had said it would be fine so long as the base had agreed and then started in on one of his monologues about how nice being young was). Shiro checks the clock; if everything’s as it should be he’ll have nearly forty-five minutes before the Holts are scheduled to defrost and Shiro intends to spend as much of that time with Keith as possible.

He flicks on the communications system; there’s no urgent communication from the base or anything, only a few scheduled do-not-reply pings and a couple of recordings from Mrs. Holt—and three messages, one every two weeks, from Keith. Shiro already feels a little bit warmer and he’s not even clutching the blanket as close as he could be. He clicks the play button.

The first is from a few days after the last inspection; the lighting is low (must be Keith’s room and must be late) and Keith speaks in a harsh whisper, pulling the microphone on his earbuds closer to his mouth.

“Hey, Shiro. How are you? I mean, obviously you’re asleep, but, you know. I’m just calling to say hi, and, uh. School’s the same, quiet, I guess…like how it’s been since you left. Some kid in my class almost blew up the simulator today; he pushed in some illegal code he claimed was accidental…I want to be flying a real ship. You have to do a better job of describing how it is to me.”

At this, Keith’s recorded mouth grins and Shiro recalls the last time they’d spoken when Keith had badgered him to talk about flying through actual space, except space is empty and other than when they’re docking the ship it’s mostly making sure the autopilot still has them on the right course. Keith had said it had to be more than that and sometimes it is, but it’s hard to describe, and Shiro can’t even begin in their limited minutes. And he can tell video-Keith is remembering it, too; he stays silent for a while.

“My roommate’s asleep, and I should probably let you go. But…I miss you.”

Shiro leans forward in his chair, as if to reach out and smooth the hair over his forehead—but then the video cuts to black and the next message pops up.

“Hey, Shiro,” says Keith, before the picture comes into focus.

The lighting’s still bad but he’s talking at full volume and he looks more awake.

“I hope you’re sleeping okay, and when you get this you’re enjoying the outer solar system. Send me a picture.”

It’s half-joking but falls mostly flat, and Shiro wants to be there with him back on Earth all over again.

“I think I got taller again. My clothes are kind of too small. But knowing my luck, you’re probably still growing, too.”

(He’s not; everything’s still the exact same size as it had been when they’d taken off, which is very much for the better—except now if he’s trying to imagine Keith next to him, how much shorter is he? He can’t be growing so fast that they’re the same height yet, can he?)

“Classes are okay. They fixed the simulator, finally, but that kid hasn’t been allowed back yet. I got a perfect score on the first go-round.”

He says it with a hint of a smile, and he should be damn proud of it (not that Shiro expects anything less of him). And at the very least, Shiro’s proud and happy and excited but also brought back down, held by the artificial gravity of this ship, because he should be there celebrating with Keith, telling him in person what a good job he’d done or sneaking out of study hall to watch his class take their rounds, and any congratulations he gives won’t mean quite the same thing nearly a month after the fact.

“I w—I miss you.”

What was he about to say? That he’d wanted, wished, wondered? Wanted to be with Shiro, wished that Shiro was with him, wondered what Shiro had been thinking? Something else? But then the last video pops up.

Keith’s hair is wet; maybe he’d just taken a shower or something, but the lighting’s better and he’s sitting at his desk in his now-empty room. He stares at the camera for a few seconds before talking, and sometimes Shiro forgets how lovely his eyes are, even seen from a grainy video feed from over a billion kilometers away.

“Hi, Shiro. I hope everything’s going okay, and that you and Matt haven’t killed each other or something.” He pauses.

“I, uh. Got caught in a monsoon,” he says, gesturing at his hair. “And…I thought of you.”

His voice cracks just a bit and Shiro’s already transported back to the academy during what passes for a rainy season in the desert last year when they’d got caught on the roof of the main building and soaked to the bone before they could make it to the door, trying to shield their eyes from the rain and leaning against each other (not that it had helped much) and now he’s wet and shivering again only he’s alone, and a long distance away and some time ago Keith had been wet and shivering alone and how is it even that late in the year already? Sleeping for weeks on end has fucked up his sense of time; in his mind it’s still the beginning of June and it’s been a month since he’s seen Keith (and a month is too long).

“Anyway…yeah. I was out in the desert poking around, and I saw the clouds coming but I wasn’t close enough. And…I miss you.”

And for Keith it’s been five months; maybe when Shiro’s felt he’s been away for that long it won’t hurt as much but from the way Keith had looked at him at the end of that last one, he’s pretty sure it won’t. But he’s not going to waste time thinking about it right now when he can call Keith like he’s supposed to. He keys in the number and waits.

“We’re sorry. The number you are trying to reach is not available.”

Shiro swears. The clock above him is still in MST; it’s past six in the morning there and Keith is usually up by then (way too early for Shiro’s liking when he’s on a regular sleep schedule) but maybe his routines have changed; it’s not something he’d mentioned and yet another thing Shiro hasn’t been there for.

“Please leave a message after the tone.”

“Hey, Keith,” Shiro says, leaning forward so the camera picks him up. “Happy birthday. I hope it’s been a good one so far. I wish I could be there to celebrate it with you, and I hope you get a chance to call me back before it’s over. I miss you, too.”

He clicks the end button and sighs. They’ve got a while before they go back to sleep, but Keith will probably call back when the captain is phoning Mission Control and the line is busy or something, and they’ll miss each other again and—no, he’s not going to be a pessimist about this; he’s already pining enough and the Holts are going to wake up soon and want coffee, and Shiro ought to make himself useful and start the inspection. He glances out the nearest window and his stomach does a flip. Saturn. They’re not near enough to see it all that well, but it’s more than a bright dot in the sky; the colors are somewhat visible from here, the bands and rings and maybe a few moons (or maybe Shiro just thinks he sees them because he knows they’re supposed to be there) and no matter how many planets he’s seen from space they never start seeming commonplace or uninteresting. He hasn’t seen Saturn in this much detail through most telescopes, even, and here it seems close enough to touch.

Shiro turns. They’ll have a better view later; right now he needs to make coffee and get dressed and poke around the engine room.

* * *

The hiss of the opening water chambers from the other room tell him the Holts are waking up from sleep, right on time for fresh coffee. He’s about to go over and see if they need any help when the phone channel starts to ring and he whirls around, heartbeat starting to ramp up, and then he sees Keith’s name on the caller ID.

“Hi!” he says, probably before the connection is completely established, but he’ll say it again if he has to.

“Shiro!”

And a billion kilometers away, Keith is smiling at him, whispering through his earbud microphone again because he’s in the library before seven AM and from the smudges under his eyes and the way his hair is mussed up he’d probably slept in there again, something he’d done quite a lot before he and Shiro had started dating (and unnecessarily in Shiro’s opinion).

“I’m so glad I caught you before you went back to sleep.”

“Speaking of which, were you sleeping in the library?”

Guilt flits across Keith’s eyes. “Uh, I have a calc test today.”

“Keith,” says Shiro. “You’ll be fine. You’ve been doing all your homework and studying, right?”

“Yeah,” says Keith, “but you never know.”

And Keith is so bright but feels the need to push himself so hard, to go that extra mile and memorize everything twice over when he’d probably rank near the top of his class if he never studied at all. Shiro had thought he’d helped Keith break some of those bad habits, like cramming all night for an exam he’d been studying for since the last one, or putting the books down and going to bed when he was really tired, and why isn’t someone there at the academy making him take care of himself?

“I thought you weren’t waking up until next week, though…did something happen?”

“Well,” says Shiro. “I couldn’t miss your birthday.”

Keith’s cheeks flush redder than desert sand and, oh, Shiro wants to be there to kiss those cheeks and actually tease Keith a bit until Keith starts to tease him back, to give him a real, physical present (because calling your boyfriend on his birthday is the bare minimum) and make sure he’s not looking up extraneous formulas when he needs his sleep for the big test tomorrow (and in general) and to tell him firmly that he’s going to ace it while holding his hands.

“It’s okay for the ship not to be on schedule?”

“We had it cleared,” says Shiro. “It’s fine.”

“Thank you,” Keith whispers, and he shouldn’t be thanking Shiro for this.

And more than ever Shiro wants Keith to be there, wants to look out the window at Saturn with him until Keith says he’s being geeky about their own solar system again (which is true). He wants to reach out and physically touch Keith’s skin with his own, taste Keith’s mouth on his lips, feel the weight of him in his arms.

“I wish you were here,” Shiro says.

“Me, too,” says Keith.

The silence is heavy, like a sudden change in air pressure, and then from behind Keith the breakfast bell rings.

“You should go eat. Get some caffeine or something, slay that calculus test.”

Keith snorts. “I’ll get on it.”

A smile is tugging at his lips, though, and even when he’s this tired he looks good.

“Happy birthday, again,” says Shiro.

“Thanks,” says Keith. “I really do appreciate it, you know. And. I miss you.”

It’s a bit easier for him to say it indirectly, on a recording that Shiro’s not seeing in real time, and that makes it all the better to hear.

“I miss you, too.”

Keith smiles, fuller than the low desert moon when it’s risen above the mountains in the distance.

“Don’t be late for breakfast.”

“Fine. I’ll talk to you soon?”

“Yeah. I promise.”

Keith’s face fades out and Shiro grasps the thermos in his hands tighter.

“Done yet?”

How long has Matt been standing there?

“Uh,” says Shiro. “Sorry for hogging the machine.”

“Nah, you’re fine. Dad’s checking some of the systems and stuff, anyway. How was your date?”

Shiro shrugs; it hadn’t been much of a date. It still wasn’t enough; it’s still never enough; every time he’s farther and farther away, and yeah he’s going off to Kerberos to explore the unexplored with a great crew, and space has been everything he’s dreamed it would be and more—but he’s not just an astronaut; he’s a person and a boyfriend and Kerberos is still so very, very far.

“Hey, Dad, Shiro’s off the phone!” Matt yells.

He flashes Shiro a smile as Shiro takes his coffee and ducks under the arch of the doorframe (still the same as always; he definitely hasn’t grown any and again he wonders if Keith would have to duck yet). He passes the captain on his way to the engines and they exchange greetings, and then he’s alone with his thoughts and the routine scans again.

* * *

Matt comes to find him after he’s done talking with his family and his dad’s moved on to check in with Mission Control back home, and for a while they don’t say anything. They only have a few more scans and tests to run, and a long time left together on this ship (even if they’ll be asleep for most of it), but Matt’s still Matt and he’s not going to stay quiet forever.

“You doing okay?”

“Yeah,” says Shiro.

Matt looks at him.

“I mean, for me it’s been a few weeks but for him I’ve been gone for months and I’m missing so much, so much time and so much of him, and…it kind of sucks.”

Matt keys in another couple of sequences and adjusts his glasses. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Dad was away so much, not when we were really young but after Katie started school he was gone a lot, and he’d stay away for longer than he was home. And then right before I went to the academy he was gone for two years straight, and I got used to it but…I kind of didn’t. And even then, you know, it was different, being on Earth and living life there—even when I was at the academy, I missed everyone a lot but I could always go home for the weekend or something, but, anyway. I don’t know.”

Matt sighs, but Shiro smiles at him. He can ramble on for ages about tangentially-related matters but it always makes him feel better, and especially now like he’s not alone in this. Obviously he hasn’t been; obviously this is Matt’s first mission, too. And space is cold and empty and there’s too much room here to think about everything else, no distractions other than the hum of a functioning system (not that Shiro’s wishing for disaster, thank you very much; he’s heard the story of the Apollo 13 astronauts on way too many occasions).

“Hey, Kids. Looks like Mission Control is satisfied with our work.”

Shiro looks up. Captain Holt is grinning at them, and he tilts his head for a moment.

“It gets better. A little better,” he says, patting them both on the shoulder. “Now let’s finish the status so we can sign off on this, hmm?”

Shiro gives him a salute, moving toward the back before he can get caught in the middle of Matt mouthing off to his father again. And if his thoughts drift back to Keith while he’s running checks and reading meters, there’s no reason to say anything. One day he’ll come back here; one day he’ll bring Keith with him and they’ll watch Saturn as it fills the window with its brightness, point out the patterns of the rings and the angles of the moons. One day soon.

**Author's Note:**

> okay this was very obviously inspired by 'interstellar' which i love so much. and yes they're a billion km apart so how do they have instantaneous skype when that's like, over a light-hour away? idk it's the future man (how did they get to saturn in a couple of months? again it's the future)
> 
> what im saying is please overlook the inaccuracies if you can


End file.
